So in Tulsa a police office died recently in the line of duty. They had this huge motorcade from Tulsa to Oklahoma City (about 100 miles). The video I saw was 7 minutes long of police going by, including a helicopter. Then, there was a wreck where 3 of the escorting officers were hurt.
Is all of this publicly funded? Does all of that gas come from taxes? Will the hurt cops get work comp?
YMMV depending on location.
Funeral expenses do come out of budgets.
But a lot of things are voluntary. I have been to several police funerals where I was off the clock. Even though I was in uniform and sometimes driving a squad I had volunteered to do it. The honor guards, musicians, etc are many times volunteers as well.
If any of those injured officers were on paid time, then, yes, they are covered under comp laws. I don’t know what happens if they had volunteered their time.
And so what? Do you get your undies in a bunch over the expense of a military members service?
A public servant died in the line of duty. Be it a cop, a fire fighter or a garbage man, nows not the time to be a fiscal conservative.
Yes all of that is publicily funded.
A part of a City/Municipality’s budget is liability insurance. An underperforming police force leads to higher insurance rates for the city or the Insurance company can cut out coverage completely. If that happens, the city will disband the police. Read specific examples and more here : How Insurance Companies Can Force Reforms on Troubled Police Departments - The Atlantic
If you feel that the huge motorcade was a public hazard due to COVID or otherwise, you should report it to the liability Insurance company for the City of Tulsa.
Personally, I think it is a honorable thing. I think people losing their lives in the line of duty should be afforded such funerals.
I think it’s important to note that these funerals are for the public, too. Many people are affected when the men and women who swear to protect them lose their lives doing so. Yes, they can be seen as too large. But the sacrifices they memorialize, including the loss of a parent/child/sibling each represents, are significant.
I think many times, police officers will travel to the funeral from out of town, or even from across the country, even at their own expense. That may be why there seem to be so many uniformed officers at the funeral; not all are local.
I think you just hit on the problem. You know as well as I do that a garbage man wouldn’t get that sort of public procession, even if he died in his line of duty.
It’s still this attitude that cops are special. And I wouldn’t care so much, if that attitude wasn’t also why a certain civil right issue has been so hard to fight–if we hadn’t seen cops treating all protesters like the enemy, rather than wanting to work to reduce unnecessary violence and the bias towards black people shown in studies.
Don’t get me wrong. I lament the loss of Sgt. Craig Johnson in the line of duty. (I even looked up his name to give him his due.) The loss of a man’s life is tragic, and it very much appears he was defending his city.
But, at the same time, I do have a different reaction to these more ostentatious displays, and wonder if public money would be better spent on dealing with the systemic problem. Let all his fellow officers who wish to honor him do so on their own time, like everyone else would have to do if their loved one died.
Of course, that’s if there was an ostentatious display paid for by the public. I’m not saying there was. But I understand why it would rankle.
I tend to agree that it is putting police over and above the average citizen to the point that it causes disruption to the average citizen that the average citizen would not get upon their demise, or expect, or desire, to inflict on others. Add to this the putting police over and above is by using power that no one can really challenge yet totally illegal. It’s a abuse of power just because they can.
I don’t think there is any reason why a “garbage man” couldn’t get such an elaborate funeral. Imagine you are a member of the secret society known as the Stonecutters. One of the members dies, and Stonecutters from all over the country fly in for the funeral. You can have a motorcade from the chapter house/funeral home/church/temple/whatever to the cemetery. In fact, when my college roommate (who was no one in particular) died last year, we drove in a long train of cars (i.e., a motorcade) from the synagogue to the cemetery outside town. Sometimes such things involve a police escort.
I don’t have any problems with the police or the stonecutters or whoever else doing this on their own dime, I was simply trying to figure out if they were doing it on their own dime, or if it was being paid for by taxpayers.
Despite being far more deadly than policing, I have never seen a motorcade for a garbage man who has fallen in the line of duty, and I somehow doubt their department’s budget would allow for it, either.
The police sure know how to do funerals. A good buddy of mine died years ago. He was an old school tattoo artist in Pittsburgh, well known to ink enthusiasts. Throughout his career he never charged a cop for work. The police who took advantage of this believed he respected cops for the work they did. In reality, he told me it was a smart move on his part because he dabbled in victimless crimes and was just trying to cover his ass.
For his funeral procession, hundreds of the cops he’d comped showed up voluntarily, lining the route as if he’d been a head of state. I drove from McKeesport to Delmont and there was a cop, in dress uniform, at every light, every intersection. It’s a shame he was dead, he would have gotten a chuckle out of the whole thing.
I could never be a cop. For me, the sound of bagpipes would be the first indication that I’d gone to hell.
Yet no one complained about George Floyd funeral
[quote=“am77494, post:3, topic:914122, full:true”]
Yes all of that is publicily funded.
[/quote]No, it isn’t.
When I was Treasurer of a State Horse Council, we donated money to purchase a horse-drawn caisson that was used at funerals of any police or fire officer in the state. But the horses that pulled it were the personal property, their use donated by their owners, hauled to the funeral location & back home by their owners, and the harnesses used were all donated equipment, as was the people’s time. So certainly not all public funding.
Though I guess that these people could deduct these donations on their taxes, so technically you could call that public funding. But that isn’t what is usually meant.